y were
like mummies all of them--what an idea!--two mummies making love to each
other! So she went on in a rattling, giddy kind of way, for she was
excited by the strange scene in which she found herself, and quite
astonished the young astronomer with her vivacity.' But Swedenborg's
firm belief that the fancies engendered in his mind were scientific
realities is very different from the conscious play of fancy in the
passage just quoted. It must be remembered that Swedenborg regarded his
visions with as much confidence as though they were revelations made by
means of scientific instruments; nay, with even more confidence, for he
knew that scientific observations may be misunderstood, whereas he was
fully persuaded that his visions were miraculously provided for his
enlightenment, and that therefore he would not be allowed to
misunderstand aught that was thus revealed to him.

'It is well known to spirits and angels,' he says, 'that there are
inhabitants in the moon, and in the moons or satellites which revolve
about Jupiter and Saturn. Even those who have not seen and conversed
with spirits who are from them entertain no doubt of their being
inhabited, for they, too, are earths, and where there is an earth there
is man; man being the end for which every earth exists, and without an
end nothing was made by the Great Creator. Every one who thinks from
reason in any degree enlightened, must see that the human race is the
final cause of creation.'

The moon being inhabited then by human beings, but being very
insufficiently supplied with air, it necessarily follows that these
human beings must be provided in some way with the means of existing in
that rare and tenuous atmosphere. Tremendous powers of inspiration and
expiration would be required to make that air support the life of the
human body. Although Swedenborg could have had no knowledge of the exact
way in which breathing supports life (for Priestley was his junior by
nearly half a century), yet he must clearly have perceived that the
quantity of air inspired has much to do with the vitalising power of the
indraught. No ordinary human lungs could draw in an adequate supply of
air from such an atmosphere as the moon's; but by some great increase of
breathing power it might be possible to live there: at least, in
Swedenborg's time there was no reason for supposing otherwise. Reason,
then, having convinced him that the lunar inhabitants must possess
extraordinary breat